


And One to Grow On

by vulcan_slash_robot



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Birthday Spankings, Fluff and Crack, Get Together, M/M, Team Bonding, spanking (but not in a kinky way)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-22 17:25:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15586965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vulcan_slash_robot/pseuds/vulcan_slash_robot
Summary: “Wow, a hundred years to the day, huh?” Bruce had commented over coffee that morning. “You’re lucky this crowd is too old for birthday spankings.”In which it is Steve's birthday and Bruce should think before he speaks.





	And One to Grow On

**Author's Note:**

> A month late but what can I say, I'm slow.
> 
> Shoutouts to discord in general for sparking the idea and Wynnesome for beta!

It was Bruce’s fault, really.

“Wow, a hundred years to the day, huh?” he’d commented over coffee that morning. “You’re lucky this crowd is too old for birthday spankings.”

Steve had been busy chugging his post-run shake, so it had been Clint who’d asked, “Birthday _what now?_ ”

“Spankings?” Bruce had repeated. He’d looked around at a room of nonplussed faces. “Didn’t any of you have friends, or uh, cousins, um. Kids. When a kid has a birthday sometimes their friends think it’s funny to try to spank them, uh, once for every year old they are now.”

Considering the childhoods of most people in the room (lonely, tortured, on the run, ninety years ago, in space, et cetera), the concept had mostly gotten blank stares at first. But as Bruce had talked, light bulbs had gone off almost visibly above each Avenger’s head.

“And. Um. Steve’s a hundred,” Bruce had finished with a wince, apparently realizing he’d made a terrible mistake. “Sorry, Steve.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Steve had replied evenly, narrowing his eyes at the room and backing into a corner. “I’m sure everyone here is a reasonable adult.”

 

Everyone was not a reasonable adult.

Clint managed to get the first spank when Steve was distracted putting away the freshly-washed components of his breakfast blender, skittering away immediately with a triumphant cry of “One!” and only cackling louder when Steve turned to shoot him an unimpressed glare.

Thor got the second, catching him in the hallway--and knocking him _across_ the hallway into the wall. He apologized for the unnecessary force, and made sure to check that Steve was all right before leaving, but still walked away calling “Two!” over his shoulder.

Steve hobbled off from that encounter with as much dignity as he could muster, and headed straight to sparring with Natasha. It was always hard to guess if Nat would get involved in these kinds of games, but she’d seemed to take to the idea of this one, and by the end of their session he was up to a solid sixteen and stinging like hell.

If he’d had any hope that the joke would have lost its appeal with the others by the time they were finished sparring, that hope evaporated quickly.

The rest of the day was a _free for all_.

Steve had declined all press events to spend this day with his friends at home on the compound, but he was starting to regret it. Sam got him by calling an “on your left,” and then going in from the right. Nat got in three more before lunch. Steve gave himself half a complex dodging away from any object big enough to have a person hiding behind it, after the first four such pieces of cover he’d passed had concealed either Clint or Bucky lying in wait. FRIDAY had started keeping the tally, in order to coordinate between scattered teammates, and would slyly announce the new number after each hit landed.

Even Bruce had gotten in on it, delivering a single, ringing slap when Steve had sought him out in the greenhouses in hopes of sanctuary. Bruce held up his hands in helpless supplication at Steve’s betrayed look, as FRIDAY dutifully announced, “Twenty-six.”

“Only one, Cap, I promise,” Bruce swore, hand on his heart but a grin on his face. “I did start it, I had to participate.”

Word seemed to be spreading, as well. When guests started to arrive in advance of the evening fireworks, Steve thought maybe the team would lay off. But as he walked past Stephen Strange in the common room, the doctor’s cloak whipped out and snapped him across the thighs like a locker-room towel. Stephen either hadn’t done it on purpose, or had a terrifyingly good poker face, and Steve wasn’t sure he wanted to know which. Not ten minutes later there was a pair of odd-feeling impacts, one against each cheek. Steve looked down to spy two balls of webbing rolling away from his feet as a teenaged voice called “Sorry not sorry!” in the distance, and FRIDAY added two more to the count.

Vision floated out of a wall, looking apprehensive, and gave Steve an uncomfortably gentle pat on the bum. “I’m so sorry. Team bonding, I suppose?” was the only explanation the android offered before sinking awkwardly through the floor. Wanda was considerably more ruthless, striding up from behind and catching him with a forward-swing on the right and a backhand to the left while he was still contemplating the linoleum where Vision had disappeared. At Steve’s aggrieved look, she merely laughed and threw an arm over his shoulder, leading him off toward the brewing festivities.

 

***

 

The most striking part of all of it, though, was Tony.

Tony had been there for Bruce’s unfortunate explanation at breakfast--bleary and scruffy and drowning himself in coffee as usual, but definitely present. He’d had an odd, conflicted expression on his face when Steve had scanned the room as the team was realizing what Bruce had unwittingly suggested. Tony was never what Steve would call an open book, but it tended to be a little easier to get a glimpse at a page when his caffeine reserves were low, and as muddled and complex as the emotions he was showing looked to be, Steve had been pretty sure he recognized them. Tony wasn’t the only one who sometimes felt a bit off-balance when an opportunity came up to be, well, silly again.

Like old times, except that now in their little collection of broken people, some of their breakage had come from each other.

It had been a long road for Steve and Tony to get as close as they were again. It wasn’t perfect, not yet, but Steve had taken up inviting himself to Tony’s work spaces with offerings of food or beverage the way he’d used to way back before Ultron, and Tony was mostly allowing it. In fact, if Steve wasn’t much mistaken, Tony seemed to be spending more and more time doing his work from the compound, lately. And yet, there were awkward pauses, much deeper and longer ones than they’d had even right after the helicarrier, and there’d been one entirely heartrending incident in which Tony had been leaving a room, deep in conversation with his AI, and Steve had been just about to enter. The sudden surprise of looking up only to have his field of view entirely filled with Steve had caused Tony to reverse course so suddenly that he’d been flat on his ass on the floor with an arm thrown protectively over his face before either of them knew what had happened. They’d stared at each other in silence for a full minute, each burning with shame for his own reasons. They hadn’t spoken of it since.

So.

Coffee, breakfast, Bruce. Steve had wondered whether his checkered past with Tony would protect his backside on that front, and also wondered whether he wanted it to. It’d be a good sign if Tony joined in, wouldn’t it?

For the first few hours, it had certainly seemed like Tony wasn’t planning to get involved. Steve hadn’t even seen him again between breakfast and lunch. After his own lunch, though, Steve had tossed some extra pasta salad, a hunk of chicken, and a bottle of water on a plate and headed for the main lab. Even if Tony wasn’t going to join in the (totally not Steve-approved and definitely improper) game, Steve still wanted to spend some time with his once-and-future friend on his day, if only to show that this was a bridge he was still interested in rebuilding.

Tony had been neck-deep in holograms when Steve had wandered in, and hadn’t seemed to even notice him. Steve, not wanting a repeat of the Doorway Incident, had kept his distance and quietly gone to visit Dum-E.

Just when he’d bent over to help Dum-E find something that had rolled under a cabinet (to the best of his ability to understand what the robot was trying to tell him with beeps and gestures), he felt the sudden sharp snap of the flat of someone’s palm against his upraised ass. Steve twisted to peer up from under his own arm, startled, to see Tony already sitting cheekily atop a workbench, smirking through a mouthful of lunch.

“Noon already?” Tony asked, waving his fork at the food.

“It’s almost two, actually,” Steve corrected, shifting into a more dignified crouch and turning to face him properly.

“Mm, no, I believe you’ll find it’s now…?” Tony raised a hand to his ear, theatrically.

“Thirty-four, boss,” FRIDAY responded on cue with the current total.

Tony whistled lowly. “Damn, you’re into the ice years already. I’ll have to step up my game.”

He did.

 

In the intervening hours between lunch and fireworks, Tony quickly took the lead in spankings delivered. Steve initially tried to stay in the lab, as he’d planned to do when he’d come down in the first place. He’d wanted to while away a good portion of the afternoon talking about nothing and listening to passionate tech-rants, figuring that even if Tony did decide to get in on the celebratory battery, he’d at least have only one set of hands to dodge.

This was a gross underestimation of Tony’s genius.

Within twenty minutes of Steve’s arrival, the count had skyrocketed from thirty-three to a whopping forty-eight. The total hadn’t climbed so fast since his morning spar with Natasha, and she’d had the excuse of a planned contact activity to grant her opportunities. Tony, on the other hand, turned out to be an apparent master of misdirection. He’d started slowly, taking the time to get Steve’s attention fully reinvested in examining a blueprint or holding a piece of machinery in place after each attack, before seeming to apparate from halfway across the room with another resounding addition to the tally. After a few of those Steve was less inclined to let his guard down, of course, but Tony’s tactics evolved smoothly and rapidly. Distractions assaulted him, coming one after another and faster and faster: an urgent-looking hologram drew his attention to the side, FRIDAY announced an “important incoming message” (which turned out to be the updated total after the corresponding blow landed successfully), a bot whirred by and knocked him off balance, and it all devolved into a merry chase that finally ended with Steve vaulting over a workbench, then dropping to slide under U’s outstretched arm like a runner into home plate, and skidding straight out the workshop door on his much-abused ass.

“That’s _it_ , mister!” Steve shouted back into the room, scrambling to his feet, breathless with laughter and answering Tony’s challenging grin with one of his own. “No more home-field advantage for you! You want me, come and get me with everybody else!”

The trouble was, the whole compound was Tony’s home field.

To be fair, he didn’t involve tech again to the level he had in the workshop, but he did insinuate himself into the rest of the team’s efforts with terrifyingly seamless efficiency. Any distraction, however innocent-seeming or even truly unintentional on the part of the person providing it, seemed to result in Tony appearing behind him just long enough to bring palm to birthday buns. Indeed, even the blatantly obvious ploys pulled by the most egregious and predictable pranksters (coughBuckycough) now seemed to always end with Tony delivering the coup-de-grace (or coup-de-ass, as the case may be). To Steve’s growing horror, he was beginning to recognize the specific feel of Tony’s hand on his cheeks.

Definitely not the context under which he’d ever hoped to develop that particular familiarity. He could only pray the others would attribute any increase in blushing to a general frustrated fluster.

 

Eventually, the evening sky began to darken, and it was time to go outside for fireworks. The count was up to eighty-five, leaving fifteen to go, which was just a few more strikes than there were guests to give them. Steve, with a long-suffering sigh and a deep eye-roll, allowed Bucky to pose him by the door so that anyone who still wanted to could get in one more smack on their way out. Steve watched their reflections in the glass wall as they each passed, catching the variously gleeful, apologetic, and conspiratorial looks his friends shot him as they passed.

Nat, Sam, Tony, and Thor each delivered a last slap. Bruce strode out with his hands up, assuring Steve “I promised!” as he headed for the lawn. Tony circled back and got in an extra, on Bruce’s behalf. Wanda and Clint each took their rightful smack. Vision chose to sneak out straight through the wall rather than participate further than he already had, thank god. Strange passed with nothing more than an exasperated shake of his head, though his friend Wong caught Steve entirely off guard with an exceptionally forceful open-handed blow, before marching off wearing an expression that was entirely too bland to be real. Steve would never trust that man’s Dignified Monk Face again.

He was so startled he didn’t even notice Tony somehow sneaking back into line until the wily engineer had already landed another strike and sprinted out the door, cackling madly.

Scott Lang, a late arrival, scored his first and last blow and saluted Steve with his beer, clearing the way for the spider kid, who raised his arm, then hesitated. Steve heard him whisper something that sounded suspiciously like “Jones up, let’s do this,” before bringing his hand down with frankly shocking force (Steve always forgot, looking at him, that Peter could probably bench-press a schoolbus) and fleeing for the safety of the lawn. Hot on his heels came a rapidly dopplering cry of “LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRROOOOOOOOOOYYYYY--” and there went Tony again, blitzing past, catching Steve with a strike that was more of a drive-by than a spanking, and disappearing into the dark with a fading call of “NJENNNNKIIIINNNNNNNNSS!!!!” that didn’t quite drown out FRIDAY announcing the count of ninety-seven.

That, finally, left only Steve and Bucky. Steve turned around to face his oldest friend with a rueful smile.

“Was that so bad, old man?” Bucky teased, slinging an arm around his shoulders.

“A little weird, but I can take it for a day to see everyone having fun,” Steve admitted. “And you’re older than I am, asshole.”

“Shhhhh, nobody knows. The whole damn country does not throw up a fuss when I get older, it’s glorious.”

Steve opened his mouth to reply, but caught movement out of the corner of his eye and reacted without thinking. In a blink, he’d spun around on the spot and caught an upraised hand by the wrist before it could again encounter his backside. No surprise who it belonged to.

“Jesus _Christ_ , Tony!" Steve burst out, "If you wanted to get your hands on my ass so bad, you could have just _asked_.”

Tony stared at him, from the stealthy half-crouch he’d been caught in. Steve stared back, cheeks reddening.

Bucky broke the silence. “Welp. I had a speech planned but it was shit anyway. Happy Birthday.” He gave Steve one last metal-handed smack on the rear, raising the count to ninety-eight, and made his exit. The jerk.

“Um,” was the most Steve could find to say as Tony slowly stood to face him.

“Did you mean that?” Tony asked softly. His expression was carefully guarded now, but Steve wasn’t about to forget the way his eyes had gone wide and hopeful just moments ago.

Steve swallowed heavily, shrugged one shoulder, and huffed out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. Might as well try to get something he actually wanted for his birthday, for once. “Sure.”

A wide, warm smile crept up Tony’s face. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Tony leaned into him, coming up on his toes just a little, and Steve met him halfway, catching him with arms around his waist as their chests pressed together and Tony’s lips landed gently against his own. The kiss was soft, slow, all promise and potential, no hurry. Tony pulled back after a few moments to smile coyly at him.

“In that case, Steve,” he intoned, practically purring, “May I touch your ass?”

Steve groaned a little, dropping his head to Tony’s shoulder. “Be gentle with me, it’s been a long day.”

“You’ve got two left, you know.”

Steve moaned, piteously, burying his face in Tony’s neck. Tony chuckled softly. He raised one hand from its perch at Steve’s waist and brought it down with just enough force to make a sound. To Steve’s delight, he left it there, digging his fingertips in slightly to get a good handful.

“Ninety-nine,” Tony announced softly. He raised the other hand, brought it down just the same. “One hundred.”

Steve pulled him closer with a sigh, sinking into the intimate pressure on his tenderized rear. He was just starting to really relax, for the first time all day, when a sudden sharp pain snapped him awake. He gave an affronted yelp and reared up. Tony met his startled glare with a shit-eating grin.

“And a pinch to grow on.”

Tony bolted.

He didn’t get far.


End file.
